If you can dominate a market, that makes you independent and free to make decisions you could never make if you were dominated…as we are now.

right2bright on August 24, 2012 at 9:40 AM

Agreed. If we are such a powerhouse (sorry!) in energy that if the rest of the world shuts down, we don’t even notice it, then we are truly independent. And that would be a good thing. I’m not an isolationist, but too many young men and woman have been dying in wars where their hands are tied, and where the enemy isn’t worthy of their efforts. I would prefer to put more money into medical and energy technology (for instance, a cure for alzheimers would reduce the medicare budget by 25% – alone) than into training a bunch of neanderthals who turn around and shoot our guys given the first opportunity.

Remember, the first rule in war. Rubble don’t make trouble.

]]>By: deaditehttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/23/mitt-romney-i-have-a-vision-for-an-america-that-is-an-energy-superpower/comment-page-2/#comment-6174227
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:40:27 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=214125#comment-6174227I should add that I am not particularly up for nuclear. I think you should use the cheapest fuel possible for your major source, and add in a mix to make sure you have redundancies. That means gas is best (right now while the govt isn’t blocking tracking and drilling on private land), coal, and then nuclear. Hydro is “built out” – we could add some, but the hassle of dealing with the green weenies isn’t worth it (they hate hydro – check it out – hydro doesn’t count as renewable for California’s renewable portfolio). WInd sucks also – and by suck, I mean it has become so difficult to license it that a major California utility recently laid off its entire wind development staff and decided to no longer pursue it (haven’t seen that in the wall street journal, have you?). And solar? Not horrible from a technology point of view. It produces the most energy when you need it – maxing out in the afternoon when there are lot of air conditioners running.

Here’s the problem with solar. Say natural gas costs $2/W (npv) installed. That is, about $1/W now, and the other $1/W normalized to today’s costs. That $1/W goes partially to the construction crews and engineers who build the plant. The other $1/W (npv) is spent over the next 30 years (and ng plants will likely last longer, meaning the overall cost will drop over time) and more importantly, is spent on the American crews who maintain that natural gas plant, and the American drilling and extraction teams that get the natural gas (or Canadian…).

Solar now costs around $4/W installed. $1/W for the solar panel, $0.7 for the inverter (which has been unchanged for over a decade for reasons you would all be bored with – but trust me, it won’t fall much), $1/W for installation and balance of system (a surprising amount of infrastructure goes into making sure these things don’t fly away…) and another $1.3 for land (unless you are popping it on your roof). The $1/W goes immediately to China, where it is used by the Chinese to power their economy (they use basically slave labor to build them, and don’t use solar themselves – coal is even cheaper, since they can also use slaves, and they have no environmental regs to speak of). The inverter is probably built using mostly chinese,mexican, or korean components, assembled in Mexico. The installers need no real skill (perfect for Obama’s america) to install. The rest of the balance of system (probably $0.5/W) is probably also built oversees.

So, you now have two energy systems. One is domestic, the other foreign. One keeps our dollars here, and is spread over 30 years. The other sends twice as much of today’s dollars oversees, immediately, and keeps relatively little here.

We can’t compete on building solar panels, since env regs choke us (yes, these things produce waste streams, which we are capable of dealing with, but the env regs require even more, and then there are the rest of US domestic sunk costs…)

It’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking that we need to be necessarily energy independent. The key to economic growth and robust prosperity is always to purchase goods from wherever they are most cheaply and efficiently produced.

What I see it means is that our assets, sales, offsets our purchases.

So we will still buy, certain commodities, but we will also be exporting and creating assets.

“Independent” doesn’t mean not needing someone, it means having the freedom to choose who to do business with.

If you can dominate a market, that makes you independent and free to make decisions you could never make if you were dominated…as we are now.

Reread the article. Some of the current waste could be used but it will still produce some waste. That will still need stored.

Would it have necitated a Yuca Mountain. No but it is already built and will never need the capacity that is already there. Use it. It should be a much easier sell if we build these reactors that produce very little additional waste.

Steveangell on August 23, 2012 at 5:48 PM

Oh, I probably understand it better than you given I have a PhD in nuclear risk assessment. The difference between current waste and thorium type reactors (or even reprocessed fuel) is that the waste from those are very small, and highly radioactive. They don’t do a slow burn at moderate (but still deadly) activity rates over a 10000 year + horizon. They burn out fast. One of the reason you need a Yucca is that if you don’t reprocess, you have a lot of spent fuel – by “lot” we’re talking basketball stadium, and since it lasts, you need to put it in an area that will be secure, even if civilization were to fall. Yes, you read that right. Yucca assumes the worst. If you have something that burns out in a few hundred years (which would be significantly less than the waste produced by the normal fissile process) its a lot easier.

I was involved as a reviewer for Yucca. Never liked the future forecasting, which had expert opinions giving equivalent likelihoods to jungle, desert, ice age, or large rain events. Hard to make sure that your waste is secure under every probability.

I never liked the Yucca concept, but like I said, it started as a dumbass liberal idea, and got more expensive from there.

The key to economic growth and robust prosperity is always to purchase goods from wherever they are most cheaply and efficiently produced.

Even if its produced by slave/child labor in some 3rd world hovel? Even if the goods produced in that 3rd world sweat shop displace the jobs of your own family members and millions of other U.S. workers? The immoral greed of this generation. Sell their own countrymen out just so they can buy their damned ipod a little cheaper.

]]>By: Dr. Charles G. Waughhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/23/mitt-romney-i-have-a-vision-for-an-america-that-is-an-energy-superpower/comment-page-2/#comment-6173644
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 08:28:58 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=214125#comment-6173644They asked Obama if he was granted a superpower, what would he choose.

Well, he was granted a superpower in 2008, when he won the U.S.A. presidential election.

And in the three-and-a-half years since then, he seems to have spent all of his time, when not playing golf, trying to run it into the ground.

]]>By: GayPatriot » Seems Mitt Romney would rather talk about the issues than AkinSeems Obama supporters would rather talk about Romney not wanting to talk about Akinhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/23/mitt-romney-i-have-a-vision-for-an-america-that-is-an-energy-superpower/comment-page-2/#comment-6173569
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 06:57:09 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=214125#comment-6173569[…] Interesting that a leftie would raise such a ruckus about the Romney campaign stipulating that one reporter not ask about Akin. And, hey, who could blame the former Massachusetts governor, given that the media seems more interested in Akin than in Romney’s just-released energy plan? […]
]]>By: Slowburnhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/23/mitt-romney-i-have-a-vision-for-an-america-that-is-an-energy-superpower/comment-page-2/#comment-6173404
Fri, 24 Aug 2012 05:14:42 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=214125#comment-6173404

We need to build at least 30 new nuclear power plants, and every day we delay just pushes the realization of their electrical-power potential further out.

We need a place to store the waste first. We have to get Yucca back on track before this can come to fruition. The government has been promising a nuclear waste storage and disposal facility for 20 years. If that happens, we can build as much nuclear as energy companies can afford.

weaselyone on August 23, 2012 at 2:32 PM

The problem with nuclear waste is that the green fascists have prevented it from being properly reprocessed into new fuel.

No reson to store nuclear waste anywhere. Storing was Jimmy Carter’s idea, because he didn’t like reprocessing. Spent nuclear fuel is an economic resource. It can used as a feeder source for thorium reactors, which we should transition to anyway.

As long as the corporations who drill and seek the energy are held accountable for all environmental mishaps and are prevented from dumping sludge in my water supply, Im on board with R and R.

rickyricardo on August 23, 2012 at 2:22 PM

If that was all the EPA did, no one would have a problem. It is the current standard of ever-increasing regulation with no measurable result (and even negative results) that ticks me off. EPA needs to be pared back to core functions or have those core functions folded into Interior and ACOE then disband the agency altogether.

The key to economic growth and robust prosperity is always to purchase goods from wherever they are most cheaply and efficiently produced.

No, that is only the case when you live in the world we didn’t get.

Leaving aside trade deficits, the ability of foreign powers to cut off the supply of a strategic good and the environmental risks attendant to shipping the stuff over oceans, you may have noticed that the areas of the world with oil often hate us or have agendas which do not correspond to a steady supply of oil for the west (like going to war to settle regional questions).

Many people around the world want us to stay home. We don’t have to draw a border for our national interest at 1st Street, NW in Washington but wouldn’t it be wonderful to trade without the humor of a drug addict? Wouldn’t it make them feel more comfortable knowing that they weren’t about to host a contingent of U S Marines? At least not for the reason that we want to steal their precious oil and gas.

I realize that ‘energy independence’ is a politically profitable buzzword, but I’m always wary of it: It’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking that we need to be necessarily energy independent.

Correctamundo. It’s a nice sound-byte but meaningless. Oil is fungible and if China wants to pay more than we do for the oil we obtain here then China will have it. That said, yes we can (to turn a phrase) reduce the world-wide cost of oil by increasing supply domestically. This will have the effects of reducing our price, picking the pockets of OPEC and Chavez and other scum and creating many jobs. It will also secure our supplies in the event of a large-scale war.

So, enough of this Yucca Mountain nonesense. We don’t need tto store it. That’s a dumbass liberal idea, like all dumbass liberal ideas, it needs to be dumped.

deadite on August 23, 2012 at 4:53 PM

Reread the article. Some of the current waste could be used but it will still produce some waste. That will still need stored.

Would it have necitated a Yuca Mountain. No but it is already built and will never need the capacity that is already there. Use it. It should be a much easier sell if we build these reactors that produce very little additional waste.

We need a place to store the waste first. We have to get Yucca back on track before this can come to fruition. The government has been promising a nuclear waste storage and disposal facility for 20 years. If that happens, we can build as much nuclear as energy companies can afford.

weaselyone on August 23, 2012 at 2:32 PM

Cast it into concrete blocks and use those blocks to build the border fence.

We need a place to store the waste first. We have to get Yucca back on track before this can come to fruition. The government has been promising a nuclear waste storage and disposal facility for 20 years. If that happens, we can build as much nuclear as energy companies can afford.

Yes but the plan has no real details because Obama would use it against him. Wink wink

]]>By: deaditehttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/23/mitt-romney-i-have-a-vision-for-an-america-that-is-an-energy-superpower/comment-page-2/#comment-6171344
Thu, 23 Aug 2012 20:53:18 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=214125#comment-6171344No reson to store nuclear waste anywhere. Storing was Jimmy Carter’s idea, because he didn’t like reprocessing. Spent nuclear fuel is an economic resource. It can used as a feeder source for thorium reactors, which we should transition to anyway.

Why, soon the camps would be overrun with little bicycle-peddlers and Bitter Clingersrunning micro-economies, fully self-sufficient and have instituted the rule of law. Over time, most camps will have to establish security forces to keep out illegal immigrants from the liberal side of the fence.

Lastly I assume you think I never drove through that part of Nevada. I did will never forget the last gas in 123 mile signs. This facility is far to far away from anything to be a problem. Furthermore the waste is stored nearly a mile underground. Now if the big one happens and Arizona becomes oceanfront well guess if you live in Nevada you have a much bigger problem. There is simply no way that with an earth altering disaster this site would not be safe. Get real you are being played.

stevie,stevie stevie. I know yucca flats is in the middle of nowhere. However the residents of that area-and in vegas-don’t feel the same way.

I don’t live in that area so i don’t care. I know i would not want it near me.